


untitled

by wiltedlettuce



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Rhaegar Won, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Baggage, Family Drama, Female Jon Snow, Gen, Implied Arthur Dayne/Lyanna Stark, Implied/Referenced Death in Childbirth, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Multi, Not Beta Read, POV Alternating, Suicide Attempt, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 16:37:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17186558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wiltedlettuce/pseuds/wiltedlettuce
Summary: Princess Visenya of House Targaryen, second of her name, prays at the altar of the Stranger.





	1. Rhaenys I

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a little leery of posting this work since I feel like it uses a suicide attempt as a plot device for character study, and that seems awful to me. But there is a story of dysfunctional relationships I want to explore, especially in the Targaryen family where Jon is Visenya, and things are awful because prophecies do not make for happy families. 
> 
> Fem!Jon doesn't actually die, and I don't describe the actual suicide attempt but the retrospection in the aftermath makes what happened very obvious. **Please don't read this if you feel like such descriptions would harm you or put you in a place where you feel compromised.**
> 
> I welcome suggestions on how to write on the topic of depression and suicide in a manner that doesn't idealize it, but this fic is really a place for me to dump my own repressed emotions through characters dealing with what their actions/inaction wrought. But I am always looking to improve, and me being an emotional wreck doesn't mean my writing has to harm others!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rhaenys dealing with guilt in the direct aftermath.

Rhaenys felt faint.

She stared at the door barring her from the maester’s tower and thought that the red walls of the keep matched the shade of blood diluted in water. Her chest was twisted tight under her gown and breathing was becoming a chore and her eyes fluttered and all she could see was a head of dark curls listing over the side of the tub and blood swirling in water. Tears burned at her eyes and her vision was blurry, but her mind’s eye kept replaying finding her sister half way to the Stranger’s embrace over and over again. Nauseous didn’t even begin to describe how she felt.

Aegon slipped his hand into hers and squeezed tight, but she didn’t turn to look at him. She couldn’t. While they had been laughing and dining with their uncle and his paramour, their sister had almost died. Might still die, if they had gotten her to the maester too late. And to think that it had only been mere happenstance that they had decided to show Oberyn and Ellaria the portrait commissioned by father of the conquest. That if they hadn’t decided to make their way to the family suites, the maid and knight trying to open the door wouldn’t have made it into Visenya’s chambers in time without the help of her brother and uncle.

Their father was pacing the corridor furiously, his face dark with emotion, and Rhaenys hated herself for the small part of her that was jealous of her sister being the only one able to garner such reactions from him. Their mother was silent, seated besides Uncle Oberyn, and the sight of her waiting for news on the result of father dishonoring her made Rhaenys uncomfortable, so she focused on the door. It was the only thing she could do for now, and Rhaenys hated the feeling.

It felt like hours had passed, the corridor ebbing and flowing with activity. Kingsguard rotated shifts, servants rushed in and out of the maester’s tower, nosy nobles pretending at being sympathetic with well-meaning simpering until Father’s raged shouts scared them all away, and the never-ending wait for news that her little sister would live.

That blasted wolf sent from the North slinked its way into the hall, and Rhaenys bit back an unladylike hiss for it to leave. Visenya loved the damned thing, and there was no doubt that the wolf loved her back. Unlike Rhaenys, there was no possible way to deny that Visenya’s Ghost loved the girl dying in the tower. He was unwavering in his loyalty to his mistress, and Rhaenys had been silently snarled at more than once by the beast. So, there was no denying the wolf its place among those waiting for word on Visenya’s condition. Really, the only ones who had the unquestionable right of being so devastated were the wolf, the maid lingering at the end of the hall, and Ser Jaime who wasn’t even present.

The reinstated heir to the Rock would be here as soon as he heard the news though, no doubt. He had been loathe to leave his charge once her father stripped him of his white cloak, and Rhaenys bit back another surge of jealousy. It was only fair that Visenya get a knight eager to see her happy, as so few in her life were, and Rhaenys had far more than her fair share of those who would go out of their way to see her smile. Rhaenys couldn’t even remember the last time she had seen her little sister smile, and the more she tried to find such a memory, the more she remembered the down turned lips and teary eyes she herself had caused throughout much of her childhood and adolescence.

Years of resentment and petty feelings were hard to push away, but Rhaenys found that all she had to do was remember her sister, frail and pale and dying, in that tub. The water had been pink from the blood of the wounds she had opened herself with the poisoned knife cruelly gifted to her by Rhaenys and Aegon for her nameday earlier that year.

Four and ten, a woman flowered, and a girl dying.

Rhaenys remembered waiting for the hurt and shock at receiving such a thing, more a cruel taunt than a heartfelt offering, and being sorely disappointed when Visenya had blandly thanked them for such a considerate gift before carefully placing it aside, away from her morning meal. She remembered feeling the shock and hurt and horror at noticing the blade discarded carelessly on the floor by the tub and the immediate guilt that she had done this. She had been the one to kill her sister, for all that it had been Visenya’s hand drawing the blade across her own arms.

She couldn’t help it anymore, and Rhaenys burst into tears - loud, ugly sobs unbecoming of a princess her age. Aegon’s grip on her hand had been unwavering until then, and Rhaenys could feel him jerk away in surprise but that only made her cry harder. Her own brother hadn’t expected her to feel such emotions over their sister, and didn’t that just prove what an awful person she was?

She felt cautious arms wrap around her shoulders and angrily shrugged them away. Visenya was dying and it was her fault – she wasn’t deserving of comfort. She had become a kinslayer of the worst kind, and Rhaenys wanted nothing more than for the maester to come out and announce that Visenya was hale and hearty and eager to see her family. Except that Rhaenys had vivid memories of snapping that the other girl was anything but to her, and if Visenya considered anyone to be her family, it was Ser Jaime, sent away by the king out of jealousy over his youngest child’s affection.

Rhaenys smelt her mother’s sweet perfume before she felt her cool hands on either side of her overly warm face, blotchy and red from an endless stream of tears.

“Oh, my darling girl, everything will be well,” the queen sighed, sounding so very tired, and Rhaenys hated herself even more for making her mother comfort her over the girl who was the result of her father’s broken vow. Her sobs became horrid, shaking things, wracking her whole body until her chest, throat, and nose all ached with stinging pain, and she felt a larger, warmer hand than her mother guide her to double over and rest her head between her knees. Uncle Oberyn’s voice was kind, lacking its usual sharpened edges he always gained in the Red Keep, while he comforted her with her mother, but all Rhaenys noticed was that neither mentioned her sister, not even once.

A draft of cool air against her side let her know Aegon had stood and left her, but it was quickly replaced by her mother’s slight form wrapping thin arms around her back, the citrus perfume her mother preferred in the heat of summer enclosing her in a cloud her childhood connected with safety, warmth, and affection.

“My darling girl, my sweet Rhaenys, do not cry,” her mother sang softly. “All will be well, and a new day shall rise. The sun watches over you, her daughter so bright, no need to fear under this wondrous light.”

The disjointed lullaby of her childhood had her reduced to whimpering. Pressed tight against her mother’s side with her uncle’s hands brushing through the hair she had left loose from her intricately braided crown, Rhaenys felt more like the child she had been during the failed rebellion than she did a woman grown. Twenty years old and she was the one being coddled by her mother, while her sister had never known such a thing, had felt so alone she thought to give herself over to the Stranger than suffer through life any longer.

Before she could burst into a new wave of tears, the door to the maester’s tower clanged open, and Rhaenys jerked her head up so fast she felt a different kind of nausea that made her whole body heavy. It passed though, and Rhaenys stood, leaving the embrace of her family and near stumbling towards her father. The king spit question after question at the maester, hardly giving him time to respond, and Rhaenys clutched onto his arm as to not lose her balance. She saw her brother step beside her and offer her the steadiness of his own arm that her father’s erratic motions did not, and she gratefully shifted herself to lean on him instead.

“What do you mean you don’t know when she’ll awaken?” Her father thundered, face wrought in rage and worry and sadness, and Rhaenys felt her heart stop. She dug her nails into Aegon’s bare arm and stared unblinkingly at the grand maester as though that would change what he said.

“Your grace, I apologize, but the princess, she suffered from quite a bit of blood loss, and there’s no way of knowing just how long she had been bleeding due to the water. I can’t estimate when she’ll wake up, if she wakes up. All I can offer to you is that she is breathing, and that the acolytes will rotate watching her condition until something happens.”

Rhaenys cut in before her father could get started again. “Can we see her?”

The attention shifted to her, and she watched the Grand Maester grimace.

“Well?” her father snapped, impatient and irritated.

“There is truly nothing else I can do for her, so if you wish to see her, I suppose there is no harm. Try speaking to her, it is known that those lost in deep sleep can still hear the world around them.”

Rhaenys made to enter the tower, but Aegon reversed their connection so he was the one holding on to her. She looked back, partly in shock at her brother going against her and partly enraged that he would dare stop her. But Aegon was firm in his grip and the door to the tower shut behind her father and Ser Arthur.

“Aegon, what – “

“Could we speak, dear sister? Alone.” He asked, his face inscrutable of any feelings. Rhaenys pursed her lips and nodded, following her younger brother to the far end of the hall. They were still in sight of the others waiting, but it would be difficult to overhear them from the distance.

“What is this about, Aegon, why did you stop me from going to see Visenya?” Rhaenys whispered, her voice soft but full of rage. Aegon’s grip on her arm tightened and she grimaced in pain.

“Don’t be daft, Rhaenys! You know as well as I do how father will react once he knows we’re the ones who gave her that damned knife,” he snarled back, placing his free hand on the pouch at his side. Rhaenys stilled before reaching for it, anger fire hot in her mouth.

“You mean to tell me – how dare you – the maester should have that!” she snapped, voice loud and piercing. She knows she caught the attention of their mother and uncle, but it doesn’t matter because Aegon had kept the knife, hidden it so they wouldn’t get in trouble. But their sister was _dying_ , the maester said she might not wake up, and no one knew about the poison because Aegon feared how father would punish them for their place in this horrific act.

“Rhaenys, stop!” he hissed, jerking away from her, but she was determined, reaching grasping hands every which way until they found purchase on the fancy leather pouch Uncle Doran had sent when Aegon turned five and ten the previous year. She didn’t care that she was scratching the delicately embossed surface of her brother’s favored possession, not when he was withholding the very thing that might help the maester heal their sister.

Two pairs of hands forcibly separated her from her brother, and she snarled wordlessly, feeling more like her sister’s wolf than a real, human person.

“Explain,” their mother demanded, her voice cold and harsh. At once, both siblings began talking, their voices overlapping and each getting louder to be heard over the other.

“Shut up,” Elia snapped, hands whipping out to grab each of their arms. “Rhaenys, explain.”

Rhaenys could feel tears burning her eyes again, from anger, shame, or grief, she didn’t know. “The knife that Visenya used, we gifted it to her for her name day. But we – we didn’t give it to her to be kind. It was coated in poison, and she knew but she used it anyway, and its all our fault! But Aegon took the knife, and now he won’t give it to the maester, and Visenya is going to die and he doesn’t care, he’s just scared of what father is going to do when he learns that we killed her!”

The hall was silent, even the servants leaving the maester’s tower stopping to stare at the group, and Rhaenys didn’t even care. Instead she burst into tears again and tugged at her mother’s arm like she was a child.

“Please, Mother. Make Aegon give the maester the knife _._ I don’t want Visenya to die! I didn’t think that she would actually use it, Mother, but she did and now she’s dying and it’s all my fault. _Mother, please!_ ”

Her mother was staring at them in shock, but their uncle was quick to act, snatching the pouch from Aegon and rustling through it while he made his way to the maester’s tower. He slammed open the door, the sound echoing through the hall, and that jump started the activity in the hall. Rhaenys could see the servants whispering, could see Ser Arys staring at them in poorly disguised horror, and she already knew the tales that would be spun.

The jealous Dornish royals felt so threatened by their father’s Northern bastard that they poisoned her and hid the evidence. But wasn’t that the truth? Rhaenys certainly remembers feeling jealousy and irritation towards Visenya nearly all her life, had teased and mocked her outside of the view of her parents, but she didn’t hate her sister, did she? If she did, then why was she so upset?

Aegon was certainly upset, as well, spitting and snarling like their father had mere minutes ago, but Rhaenys didn’t think he felt remorse so much as he was upset with Rhaenys for outing them and their sins for the whole castle to learn.

Rhaenys drooped to the stone floor and wept, but this time there were no comforting hands rubbing her back and stroking her hair. There were no poorly translated Dornish lullabies and sweet summer perfume. There was only Rhaenys in her grief and the cold seeping through her dress from the unforgiving Red Keep.


	2. Arthur I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arthur has some major survivor's guilt and repressed feelings over his vow as a kingsguard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is way shorter than Rhaenys I, but it covers a shorter amount of time and offers an insight into Arthur's relationship with Visenya. It was also way easier to write that either of the other POVs I'm currently working on.
> 
> Heed the new tags!

Arthur couldn’t bear to look at the unmoving form of Lyanna’s daughter.

It seemed he had failed her, in both life and death, and he could almost hear Lyanna’s enraged voice, yelling out for justice.

His king was silent, gripping the small hand of Lyanna’s daughter as though he could anchor her to life, as though death was nothing more than the tides of the Torrentine to be weathered through with perseverance and prayer. But Arthur knows better; he knows that when a girl decides to die, there is nothing one can do to stop them, no matter how much you beg and cry and plead for them not to go. Lyanna had untethered herself despite her daughter, and Ashara had thrown herself in despite her friends and family begging otherwise. What did Lyanna’s little girl have to hold her back from the Stranger and his tides? Certainly not her father, no matter how hard Rhaegar wished it to be so.

A king was not one to be present in the lives of his children, and a child with no mother found warmth and comfort elsewhere. Lyanna’s daughter had relied upon her aging maid and Jaime, but both had been dismissed from service for various, false reasons. In his desire to be the one she turned to, Rhaegar had isolated her from the ones who gave her stability, and Arthur had stood by and allowed him to do it.

A lifetime of watching kings harm their families, but a Kingsguard does not judge his king. He protects his king above all else, even if he can barely stand the sight of the man some days. Rhaegar had once made Arthur promise to end him if he ever ended up like his father, but Rhaegar’s madness was of a different sort than the mad king’s. It damaged only those close to the man, and there were no burning bodies to be found anywhere in the Red Keep. Arthur was grateful, but he still felt the stirrings of anger when his old friend’s actions ended up with results like this.

Lyanna’s daughter, unmoving and silent, with bandages stained red wrapped around her skinny arms and circles so dark under her eyes that they looked like bruises. So much like her mother, except Lyanna had bled out from her womb with a vicious, angry, sad smile, all bared teeth and bitter rage. Arthur had cried then, and he felt as though he might cry now. Lyanna’s daughter, who he had watched grow from a distance, dying in a bloody bed in a tower, just like her mother.

If only he had reached out more often. Played with her like Jaime was unafraid to. Coddled her like her maid did, like her mother would have had she lived instead of dying to spite her husband. But he didn’t because she looked so much like Lyanna that it hurt, and by the time the ache had faded, Lyanna’s daughter was as wary around him as she was damn near everyone else.

He had helped bring her into the world, could remember Lyanna yelling her pain and the piercing cry of a babe, everyone in the room covered in blood. He remembered the nursemaid handing him the swaddled babe while she cleaned Lyanna as best she could, remembered staring at Lyanna’s daughter in delight and awe, whose eyes were already wide open and seemingly meeting his gaze. He remembered Lyanna softly calling for him, her voice hoarse, and he remembered obeying her demands, as he did as often as he could, though it would never make up for refusing the one thing she asked of him most often.

“My daughter,” Lyanna had whispered, pained. “What a world I’ve brought you into, my little Jenny.”

Arthur remembered being surprised at the name, knowing that Lyanna knew Rhaegar wished for a Visenya to be the third head of the dragon, but he didn’t say anything to correct her.

“A world in which she is a princess, your grace,” Arthur reminded her. “Her father is now king.”

Lyanna had scoffed, the bitter anger that had stewed in her for over a year ill at place on the face of a girl only six and ten. “Her father, the king, who holds me captive.”

“You came willingly, your grace.”

“Aye, I was willing until I wasn’t. Tis the life of a married woman, isn’t it, Ser?”

Her voice had been growing weaker, and Arthur had clutched at her hand much the way Rhaegar now clutched at Jenny’s. He had begged for her to stay awake, to live for her daughter, and Lyanna had sighed and said that her daughter would have him to protect her. Arthur then begged her to stay alive for her husband, their king, and Lyanna had laughed, a harsh, grating sound, and said that the king would have him to rely on. He begged her to stay alive for her brothers, and Lyanna had cried that her brothers had one another, as she had been the death of their third and they would not want to see her. As a last resort, he had pulled her as close to him as he could, her daughter held loosely to her chest, and asked her to live for him, for he did not know what he would do if she died, and Lyanna had whispered that he would live for his duty, as he knew no other way to live. Lyanna had died in his arms, and her daughter had been silent until he had to remove her from her corpse’s cooling grip.  She had screamed and cried her loss to the world, and Arthur had mourned silently, rocking Lyanna’s daughter in his arms.

_Take me home, Arthur, please, take me home._ He remembered Lyanna asking, begging, crying over and over again, but his answer had always been the same until her very last time. He had taken Lyanna home, despite Rhaegar’s wish that she be burned at the pyre as a Targaryen would be. He had given her bones to her remaining brothers, had borne the hateful stares of the Northmen, and watched Lyanna finally get what she wanted as the wagon carrying the ornate chest he had commissioned, the one with direwolves and roses and swords, made its way North, where he could not follow.

Now, staring at Lyanna’s daughter, her darling Jenny, he could hear Lyanna howling, _take her home, please Arthur, take her home!_ But he could not, because she was not yet dead, and as long as she lived Lyanna’s daughter would be Visenya of House Targaryen, second of her name, a princess of the blood. Arthur hoped and prayed that Lyanna’s daughter would long outlive him, although that would mean breaking his vow to Lyanna, but what do the dead care of honor? He had left instructions to his elder brother to pass down to his nephew and so on and so forth if Arthur were to pass before Lyanna’s daughter, and that would have to be enough because a Kingsguard does not go against his King.

Except that he had once before, and he would again if Lyanna’s daughter were to die, because Arthur knows better than anyone that when girls decide to embrace the Stranger and lose themselves in the tides of the Torrentine, there is no stopping them, no matter how hard you beg and pray. And if Lyanna’s daughter were to die as she wished, Arthur would commission another chest, this one of direwolves and swords and harps, and carry it North, bearing the hateful stares of the Northmen and handing it over to Lyanna’s brothers, full of bones cushioned on an old blanket meant for babes, for them to do whatever it is Northmen do with their dead. And Arthur would tell them that Lyanna had named her daughter Jenny Snow and that all she wanted was for them both to return home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly love Arthur/Lyanna as a ship, and this is me making their lives awful because that's what shippers do.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to let me know what you think! Also, suggestions for titles are welcome!


End file.
